Today marks 5:4‘s fifth anniversary, and so i’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who regularly read, share and respond to the articles and music explored here. Since 2008, the blog has grown from being an occasional hobby (reading the earliest articles, that fact is rather painfully obvious) to something that now receives significantly more time and attention. i very much hope that 5:4 can grow and become even more interesting and useful in the next five years; all comments, criticisms, suggestions and other feedback is always very warmly encouraged.

But to return to the present, and to continue our annual tradition, here is a new mixtape featuring one track from each of the forty entries on my Best Albums of the Year list. The mix includes more extreme dynamic variety than in previous years, so while i’ve done a little to mitigate that, be warned that at times the music veers between extremely soft and very loud indeed. As ever, if you like what you hear in the mix, please support the artists and buy the music; links are included on the last two days’ posts.

i’ve remarked in the past on the provisional nature of all ‘Best of’ lists, and so to keep things current, i’ve updated the summaries of the Best Albums/EPs of the Years, to reflect further listening than had been possible at the time; the revised lists can be found under The Lists on the main menu.

The mixtape lasts a little under 3½ hours; here’s the tracklisting in full: Read more

This is a list surrounded by other lists leading to other lists, lists … that explain everything by being gateways into worlds of sound, feeling and information…
…the love of making lists is an attempt to remind us of what it is that has happened, and what is happening, all at once, as time and humanity collapses into itself. …
The list is a collage of hopes and wishes, of knowledge and exhibitionism.(Paul Morley, Words and Music)

So we move on to the list of lists, the forty albums that have made the greatest impact over the last twelve months. Here are the first twenty to have made the cut.